The Doctor Is In
by Ken
Summary: This was my entry to the Anime North 2001 Iron Author Contest. It had to be written in two hours and the theme they gave us was "handwriting". My story won first place.


The Doctor Is In

A Sailor Moon story by Ken Wolfe. Sailor Moon was created by Naoko Takeuchi and brought to North America by DIC and Pioneer. All the normal fanfic disclaimers apply.

Translation note: Ginzuishou = Silver Crystal

"What do you mean she's gone?" Chibi-usa asked.

"Just like I said," Sailor Jupiter answered. "She's gone. She left this note. Says 'To Chibi-usa' so I haven't read it."

Maybe she had just gone for a walk with Daddy around the Crystal Palace promenade, Chibi-usa thought. She took the note and read.

HI CHIBI-USA CHAN! DADDY AND I DECIDED TO GO TO THE LUNAR COLONY FOR THE WEEKEND. TAKE CARE OF MY MEETINGS AND STUFF WHILE I'M GONE, OKAY? LOVE YOU! MOMMY SERENITY :-)

It took Chibi-usa five minutes to read that far. She repeated it back to Jupiter. "Okay, do you have any idea what her schedule for today is?"

"She's doing - was going to be doing - the walk-in clinic work."

"WHAT!"

Jupiter flinched. "You know, the Ginzuishou-"

"I know what she does!" Chibi-usa snapped. "I can't heal people with the Ginzuishou, she knows that! What does she expect me to do?"

"Actually..." Jupiter handed her a thick envelope. "She left this with your name on it."

After ten minutes of reading impenetrable handwriting, Chibi-usa was sort of thinking these might be notes on how to use the Ginzuishou. "I don't believe this."

"Well, she has been sort of showing you the ropes, hasn't she?"

"I have _watched_ her doing readings and healings and stuff. I used it to heal a scraped knee, once! But I can't do clinical work!"

"You are twelve years old now," Jupiter said with an encouraging smile. "And she has been giving you lots more responsibilities lately. I think she is trying to tell you that she trusts you to do this."

Chibi-usa leafed through the pages of chicken scratch. "I don't know..."

"Besides, Ami will be there to help you."

This was true. Ami did most of the work, truth be told. She did the diagnosis with the computer, told Serenity what needed to be done, and Serenity went into this trance thing and Voila! It was done. Chibi-usa had done it once. It was just a scraped knee of course. But really, how difficult could it be if somebody who still couldn't write Kanji could do it?

Chibi-usa sighed. "Okay, when do they start?"

"Noon. Your mother isn't a morning person."

After a morning of struggling through her mother's notes, Chibi-usa was having a very, very bad feeling about this. Nevertheless, she dressed in her white formal gown, went to pick up the Ginzuishou from the vault, and showed up at the clinic five minutes before twelve.

She was greeted with a sight that chilled her to the bone. "Minako, what are you doing here?"

Minako stopped examining herself in the full-length mirror to flash Chibi-usa a cheery smile and say a quick "Hi!" She twirled about, letting her skirt fly out like she was a figure skater, coming to a halt and peeking at Chibi-usa from between the outstretched fingers of her trademark V-sign. "So, what do you think?" She asked, holding the pose.

"I'm thinking that I'm afraid to ask why you are dressed in a nurse's uniform."

"Ami-chan said she had to fly out to one of the border stations to consult on some emergency case. She asked me to fill in at the clinic while she's away."

"Minako, you do know that this is the day my mother does healings with the Ginzuishou, right?"

"Sure! She does this with Ami all the time!" Minako pulled the Silver Millennium standard-issue pocket computer-scanner out of her stylish pink belt holster and hoisted it. "I've used it once or twice myself, you know. Even correctly diagnosed an acid-induced heartburn! Ami was really proud of me, she said I'm a natural. And besides, if I get stuck, I'm sure your mother can help me out, she's watched Ami do this lots."

"Minako, do you know what this is?"

"Sure, silly, it's the Ginzuishou." She paused. "Um, how come you have it?"

"Mom went to the Lunar Colony today, Minako."

An even longer pause. "Oh." If this were an anime, the silence would have been punctuated by the sight of a big sweat-drop appearing on Minako's face. But an instant later her cheery smile bounced right back. "Well, this will be great! We'll make a great team, you and me, just watch!"

"Did Ami leave you any... specific instructions?"

"Oh sure, lots!" Minako hoisted a thick three-ring binder off the shelf and set it on the desk. It came down with a resounding thud. "I have all her notes from the past two years."

Chibi-usa opened the binder, and started flipping through it. "Minako, can you actually read any of this?"

"Oh sure. Most of it. Well, okay, definitely more than half of it. Or pretty close to half of it anyway. Lots of it, really."

"Minako, her handwriting is worse than my mother's I didn't think that was even possible."

Minako laughed nervously. "Well, she is a doctor after all, that sort of comes with the job, right?"

"Maybe we should just cancel for today."

"Oh no, we can't do that," Minako said, vigorously shaking her head. "Ami said it would look very bad if we canceled the healing clinic. We have to show that people can depend on the Royal Family and the Senshi. If we canceled, we'd lose our face."

"That's 'lose face'."

"Yeah, that too. Besides, the receptionist just let people into the waiting room, they're all waiting."

Chibi-usa sighed. "Okay. Worse comes to worst, we can just say we need a second opinion and have them come back when Mom and Ami are back."

"That's the spirit! Let's go face the music!"

Neo-Queen Serenity and Endymion sat on their thrones, with Sailor Mercury standing beside them. They all looked very perplexed. "What do you mean, can the Ginzuishou undo something that it's done?" Serenity asked.

Chibi-usa blushed and fidgeted, standing before them like the condemned. "I mean, if the Ginzuishou did... something, you can use it to undo that and set things back to the way they were before you did the thing with the Ginzuishou, right?"

"Chibi-usa," Endymion said sternly, "This wouldn't have anything to do with your doing the clinic work with Minako yesterday, would it?"

"Um... yeah, kind of."

"I think you'd better start at the beginning," Ami said, directing her comment at Minako, who was standing behind Chibi-usa as if in a futile attempt to hide behind the much shorter girl.

Chibi-usa quickly sidestepped, leaving Minako looking as if a spotlight had suddenly been turned on her. "Oh. Right. Well, things were going fine until we got a follow-up visit from this girl called Priscilla from the new East Asia colony we built last year."

"I remember her," Serenity said. "She and her husband had been trying to have a baby. Ami found out he had been exposed to radiation during the war. It was simple to cure him. Was there a problem?"

"Well, she thought she was pregnant but wouldn't trust anyone except us to tell her for sure," Minako continued. "I tried using the tricorder-"

"Please stop calling it that," Ami said with a world-weary tone.

"Sorry, the scanner. I couldn't find the part that said whether green means yes she's pregnant or whether it means no she's not pregnant."

"That's on page two hundred and forty-three," Ami said. "Green means yes."

"Yes what?"

"Yes she's pregnant!"

Minako flinched. "Oh. Good. Okay, so we didn't know that so Chibi-usa finds this page in her Mom's notes that's talking about a rabbit test you can do with the Ginzuishou."

Neo-Queen Serenity frowned. "Rabbit test?"

"Yeah. You know, Ami told me they used to tell you if you were pregnant by doing something with a rabbit-"

"I know what a rabbit test is, but I don't remember writing any notes about one." She looked to Chibi-usa, who was fidgeting again. Chibi-usa held out the item she was holding. "I marked it with a Post-it note," she said nervously.

Serenity took the notebook out of the envelope, opened it to the marked page and read it. "Oh, no..."

Minako pulled the cloth cover off the somewhat larger item she had been holding on to. It turned out to be a cage. Inside the cage was a fluffy white rabbit, calmly munching on some lettuce.

"Priscilla, I presume," Endymion eventually said.

Chibi-usa smiled nervously. "Does this mean I don't get to have the keys to the Ginzuishou vault any more?"

The End


End file.
